THEIR NATURE AND EFFECTS.
poisoning affects accommodation cannot well be known, and what evidence there is appears to be against its being affected. The eye retains its sensitiveness, and the eye-lid the power of closing, for some time after Most other parts are paralysed. But in the human subject drooping of the upper eye-lid is often an early symptom of the action of the poison.
On secretion cobra-poison appears to have considerable influence. It seems as if most secreting structures were stimulated by it. The lachrymal glands act freely during cobra-poisoning. Salivation is a most marked and constant symptom; it is very rarely, indeed, absent in dogs, and it appears to be equally common in man. In dogs, the saliva often runs from the mouth literally in streams; nor in man does it seem much less copious. Should only a small quantity of poison have entered the system, salivation may be the only symptom. The whole of the mucous tract is also apparently in an active state of secretion. After the stomach has been thoroughly emptied by vomiting, the animal will often bring up repeatedly large quantities of mucus, and mucous discharges are also frequently evacuated from the rectum. The respiratory mucous membrane, too, participates. Mucous secretion sometimes flows from the nose, and the air-tubes are not unusually found bathed in fluid. Of its action on the liver and kidneys it is very difiicult to get evidence, as the time before death is generally so short; in the more chronic cases sometimes the kidneys appear
